Telephony call centers which place outbound calls and receive inbound calls typically utilize a telephone call center management system to help automate much of the process. The telephone call center management system controls, among other functions, the dialing of outbound telephone numbers from a predefined, sorted customer list having a number of customer call records within each customer call list. These customer call lists may be downloaded from a call record source, such as a host computer, to the telephone call center management system once during a 24 hour period, often during the non-busy early hours of the morning, or may be continuously and dynamically downloaded for dynamic updating of call records within a call list.
In the past, the overwhelming majority of customers, and potential customers, (collectively "inquiring parties") contacted the call center by telephone. These inquiring parties may be calling for many different reasons. For example, the inquiring parties may want information on the company's products and services, or may want information on their account. With the advent of large scale computer networks such as the Internet (also known as the World Wide Web), it is now possible for companies to provide product or service information on-line via a data terminal to its customers, or potential customers and likewise for inquiring parties to contact the call center over the computer network via their data terminals.
A company may provide information on-line about products, services, or accounts that an inquiring party is interested in, and provide a field for the inquiring party to provide a telephone number where they can be contacted for further information and follow-up. If the inquiring party is on-line when observing the information, the company has two very important pieces of information, namely: 1) the inquiring party is interested in this particular product, service, or information at this moment; and 2) there is an established communication link between the inquiring party and the information provider. Therefore the company would like to respond to this request immediately while the inquiring party is interested and the communication link is established.
As the usage of the Internet and World Wide Web increases, more and more individuals will contact companies having such call centers and will request information by entering textual information using data processing or data terminal equipment. At the moment, however, there are no automated systems which allow an individual to request and establish a real-time electronic chat session with an agent via the individual's data terminal in a call center managed method.
One problem associated with prior art systems of contacting inquiring parties who place information requests with companies on-line is that the data terminal or computer often accesses the internet or other type of computer network using the inquiring party's telephone line. An attempt to immediately place a telephone call to provide the requested information to the inquiring party would result in a "busy" signal, if the inquiring party is still "on line" with the internet. Thus a telephone call back must be made later at a less convenient time using an existing telephony system that is unable to efficiently schedule call backs, e.g. by having an agent manually call back or by automatically calling back and placing the party on hold. If the inquiring party needs assistance, e.g. with an account, a product, or the like, the existing systems are unable to provide that assistance at the time requested by the inquiring party.
Other methods of establishing communications between a call center and an inquiring party have been attempted in the past. One such method includes the use of voice over IP (information protocol) technology. However, this type of technology would only be useful to an inquiring party who has a computer configured to utilize the technology. This would typically require a computer with a fast processor and a sound card with voice input and output hardware. Additionally, some companies use the IRC (Internat Relay Chat) chat standard for customer support services. This allows a customer inquiring for support services to establish a real-time electronic chat session with a customer service representative at a support location. However, this type of electronic chat session is self managed. It is not managed by or integrated into a multi-function call center. In addition, customer service representatives using IRC chat standard communications links are not specially designated and selected from a plurality of call center agents, each of which may have specific cababilities especially useful for certain types of inquiries.
Accordingly, what is needed is an apparatus and method for providing an automatic and immediate electronic chat session between an inquiring party and a call center agent at the request of the inquiring party across a computer network data path that is established between the inquiring party and an information provider, which is extended to the call center agent so that the agent and inquiring party can communicate via an electronic chat session without requiring the inquiring party to establish or participate in a second data exchange flow path. Furthermore, what is needed is a system and method that allows a call center agent to handle multiple inquiries at a time and allows calls to be tracked and logged.